Help moving Windows 10 to SSD please

v1ckyt

Hi All, Very non-techy mum here, so please be gentle. Son has Asus laptop, with small C drive (29.1gb, choc a bloc full. Also ahs a SSD installed, 7 gb used out of 111. When I put in the SSD I set it as the default drive for stuff to be saved too, and that has been fine. Problem is that Windows 10 is on the c drive, which is chocka, and won;t allow any more updates to download.

I have tried to clone/move it using EaseTODO, but when I start the system clone I select Hard diosk 0 to move Microsoft Windows 10 to but i get the message "Not enough unallocated space on the target disk. To make sure the boot ability of target disk, please delete partitions on there first"

I am not sure what to do next chaps, any advice please, i have screen shot showing the system clone page, but as so untecchy i don't even know how to attahc it here. Please help!
thaks in advance,

Vicky

Frozen_up_north

Normally you would put the SSD as the only drive in a laptop and either install from scratch, or clone the hard drive to the SSD. In the latter case you put the SSD in a USB drive caddy for cloning, then fit to the laptop.

The SSD takes less current (longer run time on a battery) and is more rugged in terms of shock damage.

Software such as Acronis True Image, will clone to a blank SSD quite easily. However I think you need a blank SSD as opposed to one already in use.

You might find the answer on the Acronis web site, or at Crucial. Both are well versed in transferring/upgrading to SSD.

The downside to cloning is that you end up taking all the clutter from your installs/de-installs on the original disk. The upside is that it's quick and easy (circa one hour with a fresh SSD, caddy and Acronis).

emptybox

Probably best to back up everything currently on the SSD, then delete the existing partition on it leaving just unallocated space.
You can do this in Disk Management (search Control panel for "partitions").

debitcardmayhem

Don't worry about a picture try this instead

type powershell in the search box(cortana) on your task bar

It will show powershell desktop app
Right click and run as administrator.
Go to to the new blue box and enter these four commands
cd /

Get-Disk
Get-Partition
Get-Physicaldisk
Get-Volume

then highlight the output and copy it using ctrl+c and paste it here e.g.

PS C:\> get-disk

Number Friendly Name Serial Number                    HealthStatus         OperationalStatus      Total Size Partition
                                                                                                             Style
------ ------------- -------------                    ------------         -----------------      ---------- ----------
0      VBOX HARDDISK VB5d79e8fb-588fabd1              Healthy              Online                      32 GB MBR
1      VBOX HARDDISK VB67b1f012-938753a5              Healthy              Online                   16.17 GB MBR


PS C:\> get-partition


   DiskPath: \\?\scsi#disk&ven_vbox&prod_harddisk#4&3554261f&0&000000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}

PartitionNumber  DriveLetter Offset                                        Size Type
---------------  ----------- ------                                        ---- ----
1                            1048576                                     500 MB IFS
2                C           525336576                                 31.51 GB IFS


   DiskPath: \\?\scsi#disk&ven_vbox&prod_harddisk#4&3554261f&0&020000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}

PartitionNumber  DriveLetter Offset                                        Size Type
---------------  ----------- ------                                        ---- ----
1                E           1048576                                   16.16 GB IFS


PS C:\> get-physicaldisk

FriendlyName  SerialNumber        MediaType   CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage           Size
------------  ------------        ---------   ------- ----------------- ------------ -----           ----
VBOX HARDDISK VB5d79e8fb-588fabd1 Unspecified False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select    32 GB
 VBOX HARDDISK VB67b1f012-938753a5 Unspecified False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 16.17 GB


PS C:\> Get-volume

DriveLetter FriendlyName    FileSystemType DriveType HealthStatus OperationalStatus SizeRemaining     Size
----------- ------------    -------------- --------- ------------ ----------------- -------------     ----
D                           Unknown        CD-ROM    Healthy      Unknown                     0 B      0 B
            System Reserved NTFS           Fixed     Healthy      OK                    463.56 MB   500 MB
C                           NTFS           Fixed     Healthy      OK                     11.76 GB 31.51 GB
E           New Volume      NTFS           Fixed     Healthy      OK                        16 GB 16.16 GB

The cd / command just stops this sad forum from blocking your pastes , since powershell defaults to blocked

arciere

v1ckyt wrote: »

Hi All, Very non-techy mum here, so please be gentle. Son has Asus laptop, with small C drive (29.1gb, choc a bloc full. Also ahs a SSD installed, 7 gb used out of 111. When I put in the SSD I set it as the default drive for stuff to be saved too, and that has been fine. Problem is that Windows 10 is on the c drive, which is chocka, and won;t allow any more updates to download.

I have tried to clone/move it using EaseTODO, but when I start the system clone I select Hard diosk 0 to move Microsoft Windows 10 to but i get the message "Not enough unallocated space on the target disk. To make sure the boot ability of target disk, please delete partitions on there first"

I am not sure what to do next chaps, any advice please, i have screen shot showing the system clone page, but as so untecchy i don't even know how to attahc it here. Please help!
thaks in advance,

Vicky

Hi Vicky, when you clone a drive, you normally want the new drive to be 'empty', and that means no partitions rather than no files on it. Since you said that the SSD is already installed, you will need to backup all the date currently on the SSD (maybe use a USB drive if it's not too much), delete all the partitions (sometimes the cloning software lets you do that) and then start the cloning process.

What the error message is trying to say is that on the SSD there is not enough space to create a new partition for Windows. You might have plenty of space, but all that space is being used by the existing partition.

If you don't know how to delete/create partitions, ask here, it takes a few clicks.

culpepper

Some cloning software will just write over the top of the contents and do the whole partitioning thing automatically so its well worth backing up the contents from the ssd onto DVD or a usb thumb drive. Depending on the make of the SSD, you might find there is free software on the makers site for exactly the purpose you want.
Samsung, corsair and Intel all have them and I expect most do.
I recently did mine which was to a samsung ssd and It shows a simple graphic so that you can see you are cloning from the correct drive .
In my software it was really just plug the drive in to a cable so the computer could see it, turn on the clone software and click a couple of times. It did take much longer than an hour but I dont know if that was due to the amount of data it needed to copy across or the slowness of my computer. Everything was there on the new drive including the recovery drive from when the laptop was new (which is a hidden area on the HHD),it saved all the user information,passwords etc all I had to do was open the computer and replace the HDD with the SSD then log back in to my user account again. I havent got a caddy for my old HDD but all the original stuff must still be on there and when I do get a caddy for it, I will wipe it and it will be an external storage drive.

EveryWhere

What is the full model number of the laptop concerned?

Heedtheadvice

Several good responses, Vicky.
I would only add that, unless you already have the ssd backed up once, I would create two of them just in case of problems (otherwise just another one).


Given the smallish size of data already on the ssd, a cheap 16GB memory stick should suffice for one and online for free/cheap with storage such as google drive (15GB for free) or onedrive (50GB for 1.99 a month - free is only 5GB). Upload might be a bit slow and therefore take quite some time (depends mainly on your broadband upload speed) so maybe an overnight job.


Longer term buy an external hard drive for backup of whole ssd and the original c drive.


It might seem complicated but really just comprises several simple steps. You just need to free up the ssd first. Windows will then have enough space to do the updates when the ssd is your main drive and the computer will work a lot faster.

arciere

Something else that I would like to add is that you mentioned a Windows partition of approx 32GB. That's normally the case with small-ish laptops (I think Asus makes the VivoBook series) with a tiny solid-state drive for Windows that cannot be removed. If that's what you have, once you clone the disk, you will need to change the default boot disk.

18cc

I think your laptop is the Asus one that comes with a small 32GB emc drive embedded on the motherboard

you can't upgrade this drive of course but with an SSD like you have done you can store data files on the ssd

if you want to put windows on the SSD then the first thing you need to do is to check in BIOS that you can even boot from the SSD and that your laptop supports this

Heedtheadvice

That ^^^ would indeed be a problem, but does not agree with the possible misleading original post! That really needs clarification if more advice is to be of any use.



There are work arounds to get windows updated in that case of a too small fixed ssd with no possibility to upgrade and I am just doing one now and if successful will post a how to do it, with a bit of luck!